


once on shore

by Tiss



Series: It Takes a City [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Gladio-centric, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Noct for king, Older Characters, Post-Game, Pre-Relationship, Rebuilding, Recovery, Unreliable Narrator, Unspecified Post-Traumatic Dysfunction, but it get better, character study elements, concrit welcome, nobody is okay, the slowest of burns, this isn't sad really just a bit rough around the edges
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24740242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiss/pseuds/Tiss
Summary: After the Dawn, a city and a king rise from the ashes. Both are only moderately successful.Or, Noct might be a little different, but Gladio still has a job to do.
Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia & Noctis Lucis Caelum, Gladiolus Amicitia/Noctis Lucis Caelum
Series: It Takes a City [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1788979
Comments: 11
Kudos: 48





	once on shore

**Author's Note:**

> “Oh, just a couple quick drabbles,” I said, in November, a little more than half a year ago. “Nothing too special,” I said, typing out itty-bitty snippets on my phone before sleep.
> 
> Welp.
> 
> One series, 10(?) stories, probably 50K+ words total, here we go.
> 
> P.S. Oh hey, don’t forget there’s an Unreliable Narrator tag on this. Just. You know. Not everything Gladio thinks to himself is The Ultimate Truth of this story. Fair warning.
> 
> P.P.S. I wrote a companion fic to this series called "Hypnagogia", but because some of the stuff in that might trigger people, I'm not posting a direct link to it here. Just know that it exists and you can look it up on my profile if you get curious. It's pretty dark, though, so please pay attention to the tags if you decide to do that.
> 
> P.P.P.S. I’m so sorry if this story makes no sense.
> 
> _Edit Oct 18, 2020: minor formatting changes for better phone readability._

##    


##    


## \--- It Takes a City ---  


##    


  


  


  


  


  


There are people who want to go back home. That’s how it all starts.

Almost two weeks after the Dawn, the day after Noctis gets released from hospital, Gladio takes him to see what remains of the Crownsguard. He isn’t quite sure why he does that. They’re a sorry bunch, after a decade of chaos, fighting demons, and surviving by the skin of their teeth; all brawn and raw skill and just enough discipline to fall in rank before their king. Some might as well be hunters now. Gladio used to think it took death to beat military training out of a soldier, but apparently not.

They do, however, seem to stand straighter across from Noctis, who looks clean and well-dressed and positively regal.

“It takes incredible courage, willpower, and resilience,” Noct says, “to keep fighting in the face of a calamity such as you have endured. For that, and for adhering to your duty and oaths in protecting the people of Lucis, you have my utmost respect and gratitude.”

The words seem formal to the point of triteness to Gladio, but none of the guys seem to notice. If anything, they look stunned.

After a couple seconds of increasingly awkward silence, a few people start shuffling around in the back line; when Gladio looks over, he sees several of the guys poking and nudging a young man at the front. The man squirms for a moment before drawing himself up and taking a deep breath.

Gladio wracks his mind for the guy’s name, and feels a faint pang of shame when he draws a blank.

“Your Majesty?” the man asks.

Noctis looks at him, but doesn’t say anything for a few beats too long. He does that now, sometimes. A lot of the time. Some part of him just – checks out. Gladio worries, but it’s a muted, distant thing. Everything’s been muted for a good while.

Before the pause grows too long, Gladio says, “Speak.”

“Um, we were wondering if you were going to, I mean, planning on rebuilding the capital. I know a lot of people who want to go home, sir.”

The guy shifts his weight around, resettles his shoulders, bites the inside of his lip and stares resolutely somewhere just past the king’s left eyebrow.

“It’s under consideration,” Noct replies, but Gladio knows, from the tone of his voice and with absolute clarity, that the decision has been made.

Noct wouldn’t be Noct if he didn’t care like he does.

  


…

  


The thing is, Lestallum is stuffed to the gills with refugees. It doesn’t surprise Gladio in the slightest that people want to get out. Over the two weeks he’s spent here, waiting for Noct to wake up and then waiting for him to feel well enough to be discharged, he’s gotten mostly used to the heat and the smell of too many people stuffed together in too-hot quarters, but it all still bludgeons him anew every time he steps outside.

Noctis absorbs it all as they stroll through the streets. Or, well, he seems to. It’s hard to tell with him, these days.

The four of them reconvene in the evening, in the room Gladio technically shares with Cor but which neither of them uses all that often, and never at the same time. Gladio and Noct sit on Gladio’s bunk, across from Ignis and Prompto on Cor’s. When Noctis breaks the news, he says it like a declaration of fact. Like there’s nothing you can do except go along or get out of the way.

“If you’ve decided for certain, then, naturally, you have my full support,” says Ignis. “I will help you in any way I can. However, Noct, you have to consider that this will be no idle undertaking. The challenge of raising a city from the proverbial dead might be a demanding one even for an experienced ruler.”

“I’ve guessed.”

Ignis sighs.

“Noctis. I…” He thinks for a moment, then speaks haltingly, as if picking out every word, and with a rare earnestness. “If you’re only taking up the mantle because you feel duty-bound to it… Perhaps it would be prudent to consider other options. I’m sure none of us would fault you should you decide to explore a,” he pauses, “different path in life, limited as the variety may be at the moment.”

Noct says nothing.

Ignis’ face goes tight.

“For Astrals’ sake, Noctis! You were going to die.”

The outburst makes Prompto look over at Ignis in surprise; Ignis looks, in all honesty, distressed, to those who know him. Noctis doesn’t bat an eye.

“I’m not quite dead, though,” he replies evenly.

The _quite_ hooks into Gladio’s mind and tugs. It doesn’t achieve anything, because Gladio’s mind is a bogged-down, muddy mess nowadays, but it definitely lodges somewhere deep.

Ignis sits silent for a few seconds, hands clenched on his knees, and sighs at last, “If that’s what you want, Noct.”

“It’s fine, Ignis. I have some king left in me still,” Noctis says, smiling faintly, but his eyes are flat. Ignis can’t see it. Gladio can.

“Well,” Prompto slaps his hands down on his thighs and says mock-seriously, “Never let it be said that our Noct has no ambition,” and then grins from cheek to cheek.

  


…

  


From there, various things get put in motion. Gladio stays out of most of the planning, but hangs around when he can, both as a Shield to a soon-to-be-reinstated king and because he has little better to do. The Crownsguard have no more daemons to fight, but he keeps them on patrols regardless, has them on the lookout for dangerous animals both of the wild and human variety, even though Lestallum has its own police force. Better bored and busy than bored and idle. Less potential for trouble.

Noctis cobbles together estimates and strategies with Ignis’ help, and Gladio reminds them on occasion that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, just to feel useful in some way. Noct is a strange, quasi-familiar presence that doesn’t seem to know where to start planning and spaces out more than is helpful. Gladio has to remind himself that at the core, Noct is still Noct. He takes some comfort in that.

In the face of Noct’s new degree of aloofness, it’s not nearly enough.

Noctis seems the most like his old self when all four of them are together. He smiles at all the right times, teases back when prompted, and generally gives the impression of being a little short on sleep, but otherwise okay.

Gladio doesn’t quite know what to make of him when they are alone with each other.

He might have hit the nail on the head when he thought Noctis strange, because this new, older, worn-thin Noctis is more of a stranger than a friend, with how little Gladio knows of what goes on in his head. Or, perhaps, “stranger” isn’t right, after all. The aloofness, the inscrutability, those are familiar trappings of the sullen royal child Noct used to be. Still, the fact remains that it’s been ten years since any kind of informal familiarity. It’ll take some effort to bridge that, more likely than not.

Yet Noct won’t ask a single thing.

Gladio doesn’t offer to fill in the gaps, mainly because he has no idea if Noct would even want to know. It wouldn’t make a good story, even if he did decide to tell it. He’d moped. He’d struggled. He’d wished a daemon would finally fucking take him out and let him just – not deal with all the misery of hanging on without hope anymore.

Yeah. Noct probably wouldn’t want to hear all that.

Noct doesn’t ask, and doesn’t reply much, either.

That’s the part that knocks Gladio’s feet from under him the most. It’s like talking to a brick wall, sometimes: he can be gently encouraging, he can take jabs at Noct’s ego to try and provoke him, it all amounts to the same blank glances and silences. When Ignis asks Noct for input on a planning issue, he delivers more often than not. When Gladio tries to find out if he’s feeling up to some light exercise, he just swivels that flat gaze over to him and stares at his shoulder or whatnot. Half the time, he’ll go right back to spacing out.

It’s disturbing and worrying, and even though that’s more of a logical observation than a feeling, Gladio feels like he has to do something. He just can’t come up with anything.

So he turns to what he knows. Being a Shield and keeping the king safe.

They track down the single surviving councilman, but the man doesn’t want anything to do with them. He says there’s no hope for the Crown City, that he’s too old for their crazy schemes, and doesn’t seem to care a whit about lending a hand to his king. Gladio would grab him by the front and _shake_ , if somebody just told him to. Make all of those brittle old bones rattle in their bag of skin and sinew. The needless violence of that thought would’ve unsettled him before, but this whole clusterfuck of an apocalypse has numbed him to a lot.

They meet with the leaders of Lestallum, the mayor and the city council, to negotiate aid; Lestallum has very little to spare in the way of resources, and, surprisingly enough, not too much in the way of manpower, either. They need the qualified professionals to keep the city running, the council says and the mayor nods, but help yourselves to the manual laborers and all the refugees you can take.

Ignis, in an incredible feat of diplomacy, nets them the bare minimum they need. They just need to prove that it won’t go to waste.

To prove that, they need numbers. Substantiated numbers.

To get numbers, they need to see the damage.

  


…

  


Most of the western side of Insomnia is rubble.

This is probably the first time Gladio’s seen the city laid out like this in front of him. The buildings fade into specks as he looks out towards the opposite wall. It doesn’t make him feel small, like looking up at the stars does – instead, above this enormous ruin, it’s more like Gladio himself is a giant, looking from some five hundred feet up. Like this isn’t the city he grew up in. It’s a funny feeling.

They walk through Insomnia, Gladio and Noct and a dozen other people – engineers, urban planners, a bunch of other experts borrowed from Lestallum – and try to keep their minds on the task rather than reminiscing. Insomnia is difficult ground to traverse, and not just because most streets are too broken up for cars. The city is all plateaus and crags and cliffsides; the bridges and railways that are still standing look weathered and unkempt, covered by a layer of grit and loose dirt. The Citadel district towers in the middle on its pedestal, a crown with broken teeth of spires and skyscrapers blasted open to the elements; the lower jaw of some beast, missing the rest of its skull.

Absently, Gladio questions the wisdom of the people who first settled here, on this mess of a topography; ponders distractedly the defensibility of the Citadel plateau from assaults, far in the past before Niflheim had invented aircraft.

He wonders if magitek still works, with the Crystal in pieces. If anyone in Lucis ever bothered to take apart a downed airship and look at its guts. If the knowledge _did_ exist at some point, classified and tucked away behind a thousand layers of red tape. If any of it could now be of use to them, this ragtag bunch of survivors with their “crazy schemes” and homesickness and emptied-out hope.

They don’t have any magitek right now, or the knowledge to use it. All they have is a few sheets of polycarbonate to repair the greenhouses and a hydroelectric dam on the verge of shutting down and what few blueprints they’ve managed to scavenge from old production plants and engineering offices.

They’ll just have to make do. Spit and a prayer, was it?

There’s going to be a lot of that.

Gladio feels nothing but tired.

  


…

  


What they’d do without Ignis, Gladio doesn’t know, because from what little promise they see in Insomnia, he crafts a redevelopment plan that puts impressed frowns on the Lestallum council’s faces.

Ignis, for that matter, seems to consist entirely of frowns and sighs and lips chewed raw in any planning event from that point on. Prompto hovers and cautiously fusses and runs errands like he’s still a twenty-year-old nobody and not a hunter with over a hundred kills to his name. Noct tries to be useful, or seems to try, and sometimes needs to be called two or three times before he’ll react.

Gladio… Gladio hangs around, half-lost, half-suspended, with no clear mission to busy himself by. Noct spends most of his days in the same room and with Ignis and sometimes Prompto; there is little threat to his safety. The Crownsguard – or should he just call them hunters, now? – are steadily being pushed out of patrolling jobs by Lestallum’s recovering police. Gladio is hesitant to put them on leave, but he doesn’t know what else to do with them. Ten years earlier, he would’ve put them on extra training, because he would’ve thought you can’t go wrong with training.

Now, he has trouble imagining what he would be training them for.

The future – any future – is such a phantom image, he can barely see its outline.

Everything besides Gladio seems to pick up speed, and somehow, before he can blink, the last of the preparations are just about done. In a few days, they’ll be setting out for Insomnia for real, a motorcade of trucks filled with people, supplies, and tech.

Something will change. Something will _definitely_ change. Not just for what remains of the world, but for Gladio personally. Ten years of mucking about in the same place, doing the same dance, fight-and-retreat-and-lick-your-wounds, one-two-three, one-two-three, gaining ground and getting pushed back and losing, losing, losing.

No more of that.

A lot of things will change.

It’s hard for Gladio to believe it.

He rounds up his Crownsguard-slash-hunters unit and talks. Just, talks. He tells them they can stay, or they can go live their own lives. They won’t be persecuted. They won’t be shamed. No one will begrudge them a desire to never look at a weapon again.

It occurs to him, after he’s done talking, that he hasn’t exactly run this by Cor.

 _Why_ hasn’t he, though? This isn’t the kind of thing he can just pull out of his own ass, he _knows_ that, so _why_?

He thinks, and he thinks, and his mind refuses to budge.

Later that night, as he lies sleepless in his cot, he listens to Noct’s quiet breaths across the room, and an image builds itself in his mind. A cabin somewhere in the Duscaean woods, remote and quiet, alive with all the subtle movements of wilderness, surrounded by pines, showered by sunlight. A home for him, and for Noct. They’ll hunt for meat and trade the extra, and Noct will fish in a brook nearby and smile like the sun and finally be _free_ –

It will never happen, he knows.

His throat constricts.

He rolls over and wills himself to sleep.

  


…

  


The morning of departure dawns early, in pale pink and greenish blue. Gladio shakes Noct until the king wakes up and then passes him into Ignis and Prompto’s capable hands. Noct doesn’t even complain – just lets them tow him to and fro.

If he’d complained, Gladio would’ve felt better.

Gladio’s sense of time has just about atrophied, but even he can tell that it’s no earlier than six. The sky itself is light, but with most of the city still lit up bright, it makes little difference. Even with the day-night cycle restored, people still cling to artificial lights.

For all their wariness of the dark, Lestallum’s citizens are mostly asleep, and in the quiet of the city, the Crownsguard-Hunters headquarters stands before Gladio as unapproachable and dirty and decrepit as it was the last time, and the last thousand times. He can’t say that he hates the building, but he isn’t particularly attached to it, either. All he feels is a big flat nothing.

He sort of hates the nothing.

Everything personal or important that was ever kept in his office has long been cleared out. There’s nothing he needs to do here.

Why _is_ he here?

Gladio fingers the battered pack of cigarettes in his pocket. There are three in there – smokes he’d received as barter but didn’t have much use for. He’d never allowed himself to smoke. He doesn’t really want to, even now, but it would feel – fitting. To smoke one out in front of a building he’s saying goodbye to instead of just standing there like a creeper for several minutes. He’d probably cough his lungs out on the first drag, though.

He doesn’t want to smoke, but he doesn’t want to just leave, either.

Over the past few days, most of Gladio’s guards have turned in resignations. Those who haven’t had just left without a word.

Footsteps sound from behind him, and when Gladio turns to look, there are three people approaching: an older man, probably early forties, and a younger man and woman who look alike enough to be siblings. They have bags thrown over their shoulders and weapons slung behind their backs and hanging from belts, and they hold themselves like soldiers – shoulders squared, eyes aware, backs straight and tense. Gladio is pretty sure none of them were ever in the Guard. From the vague recollections he can pull up, though, they must have fought together at least once. Their faces look familiar enough.

Doesn’t mean he has any names to put to those faces.

They look at each other for a few silent seconds, and then the older man snorts with a shake of his head, and grins at Gladio.

“You’re shit at speeches, chief,” he says, more teasing than mocking.

Gladio, given that he doesn’t even know this man’s name, thinks he’s allowed to take offense.

He won’t. Hunters are a simple folk, for the most part. He’d be inconveniencing no one but himself.

“And good morning to you, too,” he fires back, amicably enough. It still comes out mostly flat and a little peeved, but what the hell.

The man grins wider, and cheerier, and cocks his head.

“Is this where you sign up for a big city job?”

The hunter’s name, it turns out, is Rodge. The younger ones – “Not siblings!” – are Kael and Emily. None of them have any family left. It’s sad, objectively speaking, but not that surprising.

 _Sub_ jectively speaking, Gladio is pretty desensitized to personal tragedies of that sort. That’s how he explains it to himself.

He briefs them on job requirements and expectations and such as they walk towards the outlook square, where the motorcade will set out from. Three hunters and not a single experienced guard. This isn’t the best outcome, all things considered, but Gladio doesn’t know if he’d been expecting anything in particular. He certainly hadn’t hoped.

There’s himself, but he isn’t sure if he’d count as experienced.

The length of street where the motorcade is parked is a busy place. Gladio doesn’t have very much to do aside from settling his own and the Crownsguard’s affairs, and since all that’s left of the Crownsguard is three newbies with hunter backgrounds, Gladio secures a spot in the convoy for their “little shitty Vagabond” of a car – their words, not his – and then finds himself at loose ends. It feels a little weird, to be loitering about when everyone else is busy going to and fro, but he honestly has no ongoing tasks except to find Noct and keep him safe.

It feels even more weird when he notices that fact. Ignis hadn’t turned to him even once when handing out responsibilities, Gladio realizes with a start. It’s so unlike Ignis to ignore available workforce, he can’t help wondering. Was it a conscious decision on Ignis’ part, or did it just never occur to him? And since the latter is much less likely than the former, what could it have propelled Ignis to make that decision?

Was it so obvious even to a blinded, estranged Ignis that Gladio is a lost cause?

There’s not much bitterness in him about that, really. Just resignation.

Noct, when Gladio finds him, is directing the preparation efforts with unusual alertness. It reassures Gladio to the same extent that it unsettles him, a change so sudden and so helpful at the same time.

When Noctis turns to face him, however, that reassurance shakes.

“Gladio,” he says, and Gladio suddenly realizes this is the first time he’s heard his name from Noct since the Dawn.

For all that he’s more alert than his new norm, Noct still has the eyes of a man more dead than alive.

“If you’re done with everything else, come with,” he tells Gladio and turns away.

It’s an order. It’s the kind of royal “go and do that”, no-backtalk-expected order that Noct had always shied away from. It’s utterly incongruous.

It also makes sense.

Gladio can’t help feeling like he’s been missing steps all around. It’s finally clicking that this isn’t the same Noct, this Noct who wears a different face and barely blinks at teasing remarks and carries himself like there’s a mountain resting on his shoulders. This is the king that Gladiolus Amicitia was born to serve.

This isn’t the same Noct that he grew up with. He’s been trying to make himself believe that it is, but it isn’t.

Some distant part of him mourns.

But this is his job.

Isn’t it?

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he says, bowing his head.

Noctis turns to him – still so blankly – and silently observes Gladio, with no particular curiosity or scorn. Despite the lack of emotion on Noctis’ face, there’s a strange tension that Gladio can’t ignore, a span of time where he keeps waiting for his king to say something and doesn’t dare move, like he’s trying to coax closer a spooked cat.

Then the king turns and leaves for the front of the convoy without a single word.

Gladio follows.

  


…

  


The car ride that comes next is – something.

By virtue of being Noctis’ Shield, Gladio gets to share a backseat with him the entire way from Lestallum to Insomnia, and it’s nostalgic and distinctly uncomfortable in equal degrees. Noctis is his new-normal, detached, silent self, and Gladio tries to find his footing all over again. It’s the same footing he’d been working on, but it’s like all of his progress has been reset.

He thinks, and he thinks, and still everything feels like walking through a bog, his own thinking included.

People had probably been looking to Noct for directions all morning. It had probably been just that. It’s still the same Noct under that.

The thought slips through Gladio’s mind and leaves unhindered, because he can’t make himself believe that. He can’t make himself believe anything anymore.

It doesn’t matter anyway. Gladio has a job.

The initial plan was to drive through the night, but the civilians complain, and Gladio has to call Cor, who’s waiting for them in Insomnia, to give him a schedule update. Cor is as short-spoken as usual, but he does give Gladio a confirmation, and that is all he really wanted from the man.

Gladio tries not to interact with Cor too much, if at all possible. He has a healthy amount of respect for the man, but he can be a pain as a colleague.

He’ll probably have to rely on Cor a lot in the coming months, though, if not years. All Gladio has now, people-wise, is three ex-hunters. Cor’s Glaives will have to be the pillar of peacekeeping in whatever small piece of Insomnia they decide to carve out for themselves.

For the longest time, Gladio wracks his brain trying to plan ahead and figure out security measures, but keeps running into the wall of not having enough information. It’s too early to plan, and he doesn’t have much experience in this kind of protection, besides. Bodyguard duty, sure, and throw training in there while you’re at it, but the management tasks he’s done during the Long Night were rarely aimed at protecting people from other people.

Whatever. Cor’s the more experienced one of the two of them. He can deal with it.

Only, when they reach the city, they run into Cor at the gates. All of his Glaives are with him, too, it looks like, waiting outside several cars.

The motorcade grinds to a slow halt little by little, and Gladio steps out of the car.

This isn’t where Cor had promised to meet them.

From a distance, Cor catches Gladio’s gaze and holds it, and Gladio takes the hint and comes closer. The marshal’s face is completely impassive, as usual; Gladio can’t read it at all. That’s usual, too, but this time, for some reason he can’t discern, it annoys him.

As Gladio nears Cor and his Glaives’ cars, though, he begins to notice things. Things like the number of Glaives around, which is entirely too big for a welcoming party, and the amount of cargo loaded in the open-bed trucks. He can even pick out a couple tents here and there. Also, weapons. Boxes marked _EXPLOSIVE_. Piled duffel bags.

Gladio would really like an explanation.

“Cor,” Gladio starts to say, but apparently, there’s enough ‘what the fuck’ in his tone that Cor can guess his meaning from that alone.

“Something has come up. I have to leave,” the marshal announces, face implacable.

 _‘Something has come up’_ , _he says._

Incredulous, Gladio asks, “You’re leaving me with three people to guard the king _and_ keep order in the entire city?” He can feel himself getting angry, and he can see Cor growing uncomfortable. _Good_.

“I have no other choice. You are Clarus’ son, you’ll be fine.”

“Cor – “ he growls.

“ _Someone_ has to maintain the peace where His Majesty’s influence doesn’t reach.”

“The hunters – “

“Are unreliable – “

“That’s bullshit!”

“ – and you know it, Gladiolus!”

He glares at Cor, bristling and incensed, and refuses to back down. Cor may have been a field commander before, back when there was still a clear line of command, but Shields have always been under the direct command of their kings. Gladio is nobody’s subordinate but Noct’s, and Cor’s leaving looks a whole lot like running away, from where he’s standing.

He’d expected this from the foot soldiers, but not from this man.

Cor sighs.

“I just need to tie up some loose ends. Take care of a few risk factors. Then I’ll return.”

Gladio doesn’t trust himself not to say something that will drive a rift in the semblance of camaraderie they’ve built over the last ten years, so he keeps his mouth shut tight, and when his temper is still boiling a few seconds after, he turns his back and leaves. Cor won’t be backing down on this one, he can see that. Gladio doesn’t even have any debts he could claim.

This – Cor forgetting to warn people when he takes action that has consequences for everyone around – isn’t even new.

He feels monumentally stupid now for letting the remaining Crownsguard choose their own destiny instead of just towing them along, and regrets not consulting Noct about it. He really should’ve done that. He isn’t on his own anymore.

Shiva’s tits, but he’d really stormed off like a sullen teen from a fight with a parent. Where did that come from? Not that he’d prefer the apathy of the last several years to this, but at least that one was predictable. Gladio could really do without the anger or the worry.

He’d considered himself an adult, too.

What the hell. He _is_ an adult, by any measure. He’ll deal with this as an adult: take the hit and get back up and take the fucking responsibility.

He’ll fucking do it all alone, gods-fucking-dammit.

  


…

  


Human beings, it turns out, need a surprising variety of stuff to live in safety and comfort.

Gladio, along with everyone who made it through the Long Night, had gotten used to having very little in terms of comfort, but Lestallum had always had electricity and heating and running water and all the other basic benefits of civilization that it doesn’t occur to you to miss until you’ve been without them for some time. As someone who’s always liked camping, Gladio even has a bit of an advantage in this regard.

Camping in an abandoned city, though, is vastly different from camping in the wild.

Camping in an abandoned city is also vastly different from trying to live in one.

Along with some of the subway tunnels, the Citadel, even after the waste that war and Ardyn have laid to it, is the only place that still has power in the entire city. It makes sense to Gladio: you’d want your most strategically important points to stay functional until the very last. The dam that used to power Insomnia, built into the ocean-facing part of the southeastern wall, can keep chugging away for years without supervision, but a decade, by all estimates, is pushing it, and the lights do sputter out on occasion.

The dam, along with the water supply system, is the first thing Noctis has the engineers and electricians look at. Very few of them have that particular expertise, but it’s all they have. Some parts turn out to be in dire need of replacement, but they cannot get any without reconstructing either the plant which used to produce them or at least the blueprints, and even if the blueprints have survived the magiteks, the demons, and everything else, they’d still need a working foundry. Insomnia had a few, but the scouting teams have yet to find one that would work with minimal repair.

If nothing else, they need to get running water going sooner rather than later. Shelter, water, food, in that order. The basic priorities of survival; Gladio can recite them in his sleep. For shelter, they have blocks B and C of the Citadel: those, by professional estimation, are the least likely to begin collapsing. For water and food, they have about a month’s worth of rations from Lestallum, with more promised to them should they need it. Neither are very sustainable in the long run.

At the end of day one, Noctis crumples onto a cot in a hastily appropriated room in the bowels of the Citadel and just sits there for a minute or two, looking at nothing with those blank eyes of his. When he notices Gladio staring, he slips under the blanket and turns away.

No faked smile like he’d given Ignis and Prompto. No measured, “Goodnight,” like would’ve fit the kind of competent ruler face he’d been showing day.

Ten years ago, Gladio would’ve treated Noct like a sulky teenager and left him be. Maybe teased him a bit, all in good fun.

Tonight, Gladio is getting pissed off again.

He swallows it down and leaves the room.

It’s so weird, that’s he keeps getting mad over something that really shouldn’t warrant that sort of response. Cor’s sudden bowing-out aside, Gladio’s weird non-interactions with Noctis are hardly something that would be reasonable to pick a fight over. Noctis is doing his job, and so is Gladio. If Gladio has some sort of beef with Noct as his friend rather than as his king, well… He can’t really start calling the king ‘Noct’ once more. Gladio wants to see _his_ Noct again, talk with him properly, without the specter of impending sacrifice hanging over them, but Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV isn’t at fault for taking Noct’s place.

_I’m not quite dead, though._

Ignis was right. Noctis had been a hair away from death. That sort of experience changes a man; Gladio has seen it with Guards and hunters alike.

Not quite dead.

Does that mean, not entirely alive, either?

Gladio just needs some kind of hint, a thread he can pull to unravel whatever is going on in Noctis’ mind. This isn’t his Noct, but maybe it’ll still work. Maybe it can all still mean something.

Belatedly and with no prior indication, he realizes he feels some sort of alive again. Like the anger, it’s yet another one of those first-in-a-while things. It feels strange, and sort of disorienting.

It feels like waking up.

Gradually, they carve out a space amid the Citadel’s gilded halls. Block B, which used to be half-residential anyway, gets filled up and then some: there are more people than there are units, and that’s including those rooms where the windows have cracked or the plumbing has sprung a leak. Actually, almost all the rubber parts in all of the faucets have dried out and need to be changed. Everything, including the vents, is covered in dust, despite the lack of a recent human presence, so everything needs to be cleaned, unless they want the people to keep sneezing.

And this is just the Citadel.

It’s only now dawning on Gladio just what kind of behemoth undertaking they’ve signed up for, and how little their efforts amount to. He’s pretty sure it’s the same for their king.

The insides of the Citadel are familiar in the worst way, like memories of a previous life. Gladio keeps getting – not flashbacks, exactly, more like moments of déjà vu, sudden realizations of _I know this_ , more and more of them in the light of day: glimpses of remembered feelings, sensations, sounds, even smells. He’ll see something from a particular angle in a particular light, and it’ll be overlaid with the same image in a different context.

If he pulls on that impression, like on a champagne plug, a full set of associations will come bubbling forth. They feel like they happened to someone else. Gladio can hardly recognize himself in the teenager he once was.

His entire life from before he left the city seems like a dream that’s fading from his mind the more he thinks about other things. He’d thought coming back to Insomnia would take him back, make the memories more real, but it doesn’t. Not at all. Gladiolus Amicitia, the proud heir of his house, the cocksure youth, the idealist, is no less dead in the ruins of his home than he was taking on daemons on the outskirts of Lestallum.

Or perhaps that boy had never existed in the first place. Perhaps, like so many other hopeful, light-hearted ideas, he’d been just another daydream. A mirage at the junction of neon city lights. A ghost that never got to live.

A ghost that’s nowhere to be found, now that everything that used to bind it is gone.

In a way, Gladio was never truly Gladiolus Amicitia. What Gladio was might as well be a fabrication of his mind.

What Gladio _is_ , is lost.

Being around Noctis used to help, when Gladio had still thought of him as Noct. It doesn’t anymore.

The more time Gladio spends around him, the more the feeling of familiarity fades and the feeling that the change from Noct to Noctis is irreversible grows. It’s like that thing he’d read about in a play once – entropy. You can’t unstir the jam from the pudding once you’ve stirred it in. You can never again be who you were before. Such a simple truth, and yet Gladio keeps forgetting it.

Every time he remembers, he feels more alone than before.

But he does his job, and he gets used to Noctis all anew, and even though they hardly talk, at least Gladio isn’t floundering anymore. At least he can tell, somewhat, where he stands.

It’s fine, that this is a new, different Noctis. It’s fine.

It doesn’t make Gladio happy, but it’s fine.

He doesn’t need to be happy, or to have his own ghost telling him what to do, to be the king’s Shield.

  


…

  


Noctis avoids the throne room for months.

  


…

  


With how few administrative workers they have, it’s a wonder – or rather, a testament to Ignis’ organizational skills – that anything gets done. Noctis does his part without much complaint. He’s still quiet, and aloof, and all of those things that Noct used to only be in front of strangers and now is all the time, but he’s as hardworking a king as Insomnia could’ve hoped for, all things considered. He finds somewhere some sort of mettle to put in his spine when he needs it, and he gets people to stop slacking without saying a word or even changing his expression much, and Gladio eventually gets used to the constant blankness. It would’ve been easier if it was anything like Cor’s, but it isn’t.

At least it doesn’t remind Gladio of some hunters’ thousand-yard-stare anymore.

He trails after Noctis from office to meeting and back to the office again, in between keeping his three-hunter-strong Crownsguard in line and shape, and things seem to find some sort of groove. Noctis still pauses before the throne room doors and refuses to move into the king’s traditional suite. Ignis gets along with his secretary and manages relatively fine for a man who can’t see, and only needs to raise the topic of royalty-appropriate lodgings once to get the hint. Prompto switches between helping Ignis out, trying to resurrect the Citadel’s old computers and lending a hand to the mechanics down in the car park. It’s a slow, plodding way up the hill of rebuilding.

Then, in an undiscussed, gloriously outrageous move, Noctis abolishes hereditary nobility, and Ignis just about has an apoplexy.

“That was incredibly reckless,” he says when the three of them, Ignis and Noctis and Gladio, leave the meeting room together after the announcement; his chiding, tense tone breaks over the bulwark of the king’s impassivity. “Have you thought about how you’re going to regulate authority structures?”

“Merit-based,” Noctis says, flatly.

“Noct,” Ignis sighs. “I can see that your heart was in the right place, but I would really like to go over your exact plans with you later. Those _are_ revolution-scale changes.”

Noctis hums his assent and keeps walking.

Ignis sighs again, heavier than the time before.

Gladio gets the feeling that there’s something more to that sigh than just exasperation at Noctis’ rash decisions.

“Actually,” Ignis begins, uncommonly tentative and somehow somber, “there was something I wanted to ask for.”

Noctis doesn’t give any indication he heard anything, but both Ignis and Gladio are used to that by now. It doesn’t always mean he isn’t listening.

“I would like to request a couple days of leave for myself and Prompto. Perhaps a week. I’m afraid I’m needed at Hammerhead.”

Noctis stops mid-stride. His flat, dead-fish eyes gain the barest hint of awareness; it’s the closest thing to shock Gladio has seen on his face since the Dawn.

It takes Noctis a minute to quietly ask, “Why?”

“A message came from Cindy,” Ignis says, serious and apologetic. “It seems that – it shouldn’t be long now, before…” and he trails off, uncertain in some indiscernible way. With his eyes hidden behind a visor and his voice carefully controlled, Ignis is nigh unreadable.

“You mean Cid?” Gladio asks.

“Indeed.”

Gladio sucks in a deep breath. He isn’t exactly friends with old Sophiar, but he knows enough to like him. Ignis has been his caretaker for years, though; he’s attached to that grandpa. If Cid decides to kick the bucket, Ignis won’t take it well.

With surprise, Gladio realizes he cares. Really, tangibly cares.

He’s more surprised by his own awareness than the fact itself.

“I’m not keeping you,” Noctis says, perfectly even, and a strange, conflicted noise escapes Ignis’ throat.

“Noct – “ Ignis forces out, voice strained in that subtle Ignis way.

“Go to Hammerhead. I’ll let you know when I need you.”

Even to Gladio’s ears, the words sound harsh, but the emotionless tone Noctis says it in smooths the edges somehow. It doesn’t come out as harsh as it could have. Ignis seems to lose a bit of tension, in any case.

“Very well,” he says, still subdued, but once again fully professional. “Thank you. I’ll find you later today.”

Ignis heads off to his own office then, blind steps already sure after only several months at the Citadel. Noctis starts walking, too, slow and without much energy or apparent direction. His shoes make barely any sound. Suddenly conscious of his own heavy tread, Gladio tries to step quieter as he follows.

“What about you, then?” Noctis asks, unexpectedly, and there’s something incredibly familiar about the tone of his voice, a thread of something, _something_ that makes some corner of Gladio’s mind itch and buzz.

This isn’t the same Noct, he knows that, he _knows_ , but suddenly it _is_ , he knows this _tone_ –

 _“You got plans, too_ _,”_ _asked fake-casual in a quiet apartment on top of the world, early Saturday evening after Ignis had to go be at a meeting and Prompto had a photography something and it was just the two of them and a video game returned to title screen on mute, and the setting sun_ _was solidifying everything in amber: Noct’s drawn-up knee, the controller on the floor, the forced nonchalance, the blunt blankness of Noct’s face._

Oh, he masks it so much better now, but it’s still the same tone.

Gladio had been such an utter idiot.

Such an amazing, glorious fucking idiot.

This isn’t a stranger, or the Chosen King, or a saint. This is just Noct, the same one who’d refused to use the training room where Gladio had broken his arm in training, who’d avoided the throne room that’s supposed to be his and has let Ignis go even though the government just might crumble without him. The Noct who hides his hurts with a vehemence better left for the abused and the loners, and Noct has never been a loner, not in the full sense of the word; he’d always reached out for a connection, with just enough restraint to plead plausible deniability.

He’d drawn his strength from his friends, their Noct. The strength to take another step.

Probably the last step, too.

It’s like Gladio had forgotten what it was like, being around Noct, forgotten to look beneath the surface and extrapolate and take into account everything else that’s going on in Noct’s bubble, to account for the heavy royal blood and the tender heart and everything else that all of the Citadel had tried to train out of its prince. Gladio does believe in nurture over nature, but some things, he feels, are worth keeping despite everything else.

Right now, to no one’s bigger surprise than his own, he feels distinctly attached to those things.

This is Noct, with all of his gentleness but none of the barbs left to hide behind, so he’s resorted to iron walls instead. Gladio would guess so, anyway. He should be on the money. It turns out this is the same Noct, after all. Just a bit battered. A bit hurt.

Gladio knows all kinds of hurts.

“I’m with you,” he says, voice low and unintentionally unsteady, and it’s not everything, it’s not even what he _wants_ to say, but it’s _true_ , and it’s the best he can do.

Noct looks over at him, and for the first time in a long while, Gladio can see something alive in those flat eyes.

It’s not enough, but right now, it’s the best they can do.

  


  


  


  


  


  


**Author's Note:**

> The actual acronym referenced in the part where Gladio finds the hunters a spot in the motorcade is LSVW, which officially stands for “Light Support Vehicle, Wheeled” but which the Canadian army folks lovingly interpret as “Little Shitty Volkswagen”. Go look it up in [“Glossary of military slang” on Wikipedia](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_military_slang) if you don’t trust me. There’s a bunch more stuff like that there. It probably says something about me that I find these kinds of double meanings hilarious.
> 
> A Vagabond is more like a Jeep than a Volkswagen, btw. Just. Worldbuilding. Can’t resist.
> 
> The play that mentioned entropy is Arcadia by Tom Sheppard. I had to read it for a class in uni my freshman year, and that explanation got really stuck in my head. I think it’s pretty neat, even though a physicist would probably wail in horror from how inaccurate it is. Entropy is a little more complicated than just the flow of time, I think, something about universal uncompensated energy loss and other things I haven’t understood very well yet, but don’t quote me on this, my major was nowhere near science.
> 
> Also, speaking of entropy, Hyperion by Dan Simmons is a really cool sci-fi book that deals with the concept a bit more extensively (and is probably as much of a scientific travesty as Arcadia, but I’m not a good judge of that, so I’ll be shutting up). There’s a whole series, but even if you just read Hyperion alone, it’s pretty darn good. Honestly, I’d say it’s the best book in the series. It’s creepy in some places and touching in others, and it’s just, an experience all around. That might be my childhood fondness talking, of course :P Alright, that’s it for unsolicited book recs.
> 
> If you’re a music nut like me and/or aren’t afraid of weird-ish music genres, the song I was listening to on repeat while writing the very end of this fic and which helped me break through the struggle I was having with it is マタタキ (Matataki) by Walrus (the contemporary Japanese shoegaze band), 光のカケラ (Hikari no Kakera) album. Random, but true. [Here’s a YouTube link to it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coWh0aUFRZw)
> 
> Also, I couldn't check if the formatting looked okay on mobile because my phone is a brick right now, so please do tell me if that big framed "It Takes a City" line in the beginning doesn't look right.
> 
> Finally, the next part should be up in about a week, but that's only because the only thing it needs is some light editing. The one after that is still missing some of its bones, to speak nothing of the meat. This'll take a while, is what I'm saying. Just FYI.


End file.
